Gavin Maxwell was a romantic, self-destructive, aristocratic adventurer who worked as secret agent, shark fisherman, racing driver, poet and travel writer. His books on Iraq, Sicily and Morocco were acclaimed, but his fame as a writer rested on his bestselling story of the otters he raised and lived with in a remote cottage on the west coast of Scotland, Ring of Bright Water. Maxwell's private life was every bit as turbulent. His essential homosexuality was masked by the love of a number o...

This edition does not include illustrations.The authorised biography of the great naturalist and conservationist Gerald Durrell, who died aged seventy in January 1995 in Jersey, where he founded the zoo he’d dreamed of as a small boy and pioneered the captive breeding of animals for conservation.Gerald Durrell was a world-famous naturalist and popular author who wrote, in all, some thirty-seven immensely readable yarns, including the bestselling ‘My Family and Other Animals...

In 1945, as Allied bombers continued their final pounding of Berlin, the panicking Nazis began moving the assets of the Reichsbank south for safekeeping. Vast trainloads of gold and currency were evacuated from the doomed capital of Hitler's 'Thousand-year Reich'.Nazi Gold is the real-life story of the theft of that fabulous treasure - worth some 2,500,000,000 at the time of the original investigation. It is also the story of a mystery and attempted whitewash in an America...

Of all the extraordinary individual accounts that have come out of the Second World War and its aftermath, few can compare with that of Eric Pleasants, a member of the 'bastard' British wing of Hitler's SS - the British Free Corps. In this compelling autobiography, Pleasants writes of the bizarre and traumatic years he spent as a prisoner of the twentieth century's most notorious dictators.A life-long pacifist, Pleasants spent the early years of the war on occupied Jersey. He was i...

‘A renegade who was right . . . He was truly a man before his time’ SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH‘An account of Durrell’s very first job, as an animal handler at Whipsnade, just after the end of the Second World War, an experience that helped fashion his philosophy of animal keeping’ GUARDIANAt the age of two I made up my mind quite firmly and unequivocally that the only thing I wanted to do was to study animals. Nothing else interest...

A classic Gerald Durrell title reissued by Penguin to celebrate the centenary of his birth'Gerald Durrell was magic' SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGHMenagerie Manor chronicles the early, sunlit days of Gerald Durrell’s dream to create a sanctuary for animals, realized Les Augrès Manor in Trinity, Jersey. Here we encounter Leo the lion, who enjoys roaring solidly through the night; N’Pongo the gorilla who thinks nothing of boarding a small pl...

My Family and Other Animals is the first book in The Corfu Trilogy, the inspiration for ITV's The Durrells.The bewitching account of a rare and magical childhood on the island of Corfu by treasured British conservationist Gerald DurrellEscaping the ills of the British climate, the Durrell family - acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their long-suffering ...

The third book in The Corfu Trilogy (after My Family and Other Animals and Birds, Beasts and Relatives), the beloved books that inspired ITV's television series The Durrells.Just before the Second World War the Durrell family decamped to the glorious, sun-soaked island of Corfu where the youngest of the four children, ten-year-old Gerald, discovered his passion for animals: toads and tortoises, bats and butterflies, scorpions and...

He's operated on whales, administered antibiotics to performing lions, barely escaped alive after treating unpredictable chimps, cared for every imaginable household pet - and most of all, enjoyed every minute of it. Well-known veterinarian, cartoonist, writer, and one of the world's leading authorities on horse behavior - Dr. Robert M. Miller shares his memoirs of a life filled with all the joys and tragic moments that caring for, and loving, animals brings. Now the vet known for his hila...

It's two decades since Chris Stewart moved to his farm on the wrong side of a river in the mountains of southern Spain and his daughter Chloe is preparing to fly the nest for university. In this latest, typically hilarious dispatch from El Valero, we find Chris, now something of a local literary celebrity, using that fame to help out his old sheep-shearing partner; cooking a TV lunch for visiting British chef, Rick Stein; and discovering the pitfalls of Spanish public speaking. Yet it's at...

** Now a major TV series on Channel 5 **Now settled into the sleepy Yorkshire village of Darrowby, and married to Helen the farmer’s daughter, James Herriot thinks he’s finally got himself sorted. But life as a vet in the 1930s was never going to be easy. Quite aside from his unpredictable colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, he must contend with new-fangled medical techniques, delivering calves after far too much home-made wine, and a grudge-holding ...

** New York Times Bestseller **Animals behaving badly, other people's misfortunes and the most bizarre true crime story ever. French Fried is the unfortunately true account of Chris Dolley's first eight months in France and has been described as 'A Year in Provence with Miss Marple and Gerald Durrell.'Just when Chris and Shelagh think nothing more could possibly go wrong, they discover that Chris's identity has been stolen and their life savings - ...